Prowl's Quest for Justice
by CNightJoy
Summary: Someone's going on a pranking bindge and Sideswipes in Nepal? Who is this mysterious prankster or pranksters and will Prowl be able to catch him, her, them? with everything going wrong for our favorite SIC?


This has taken me forever to write. Thanks again to Puss in Heels for reading this over and making sure I haven't made a fool of myself.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, thank you.

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To say Prowl was mad would have been an understatement; he was livid! Of course, he didn't let any of his anger show on his perfectly calm face, which was still covered in chicken feathers. How could he have fallen for such an obvious prank?

Optimus, Jazz, and Ironhide were all trying to keep a straight face, while Hound, Trailbreaker and Prowl all tried to give their long-range patrol reports. Hound and Trailbreaker left as soon as they were finished. Prowl however, paused a moment.

"I will assume that you would like to find the culprit to this latest prank?" asked Optimus with a small smile under his mask.

"If I may sir," said Prowl with the same dignity he always presented himself with. "But first, I would like to get these feathers off of me before Ratchet notices."

"Mech 'ell be cursin' up a storm when he sees ya," smirked Ironhide, while Jazz poorly hid his giggles behind a servo. He most likely already had taken several photos of the three victims during the debriefing. Prowl would have to think of a way to confiscate those.

"Thank you sir, Ironhide, Jazz," Prowl nodded to each, then turned and left the conference room.

After quickly cleaning the glitter, pink feathers, and honey off of his frame, Prowl headed to the security room to speak to Red Alert. If anyone would have footage of setting up this little prank it would be him. As he entered, he could hear Inferno trying to calm Red Alert, who was, once again, spazzing out.

"I'm telling you, Inferno, the Decepticons have infiltrated our base and caused all our cameras to go haywire!"

"And Ah'm telling you, Red, that Teletran would have picked up on any Decepticon signatures within a 15 mile radius of the base," stated Inferno calmly, though Prowl could tell that he was slowly losing his patience, as impossible as that may be.

"No! No! NO! I know it was them and Teletran has been reprogrammed too. We can't trust it anymore!"

"I find it highly unlikely and illogical that Teletran has been reprogrammed by Decepticons when we have had round the clock shifts," said Prowl as he stepped into the paranoid bot's cave.

"And how do you know that one of those bots didn't sabotage Teletran 1? Huh Prowl? Maybe you're working with them too! Maybe you've all been brainwashed. It's happened before, IT CAN VERY WELL HAPPEN AGAIN!"

Prowl ignored the ranting and allowed Inferno to attempt to calm down Red once more. Finally, once Red Alert had at least decided that Prowl was not a threat to the rest of the crew, Prowl was able to ask for footage around the entrance to the Ark for the past two days.

"That's just it," said Inferno calmly before Red Alert could go off again "Most of the security footage has been looped to play the two days ago for 24 hours. Red and Ah can't seem to figure how to stop it."

"Is there any way for the footage to be retrieved?" asked Prowl.

"Why do you want to know, Prowl?" asked Red Alert ready for another round of paranoia ranting.

"Because I would like to know the person or persons responsible for the latest prank -"

Before Prowl could finish Red Alert was back into paranoid rant mode. "You see Inferno! I knew this would happen. My precious cameras are off line and all the pranksters know it, so they go and have a field day. If my estimations are correct, we'll all be pink tomorrow, and every energon machine will be rigged to explode! Order will fall, and chaos will rein!"

Prowl decided he'd had enough. So before he could witness Red Alert glitch, he left the security room and commed Ratchet to prepare for a new patient. Ratchet just snapped at him about missing his favorite wrench.

Well if the security cameras were down at the time of the incident, Prowl would just have to check the duty roster and cross reference it with the most likely time frame the prank was set up. A perfectly logically sound plan…

…until Prowl got a glance at his office door. The artistic nature and maturity level of the image painted there was that of a kindergartener. Sideswipe was beyond dead. Prowl thought he might just make life in the brig without parole a legitimate punishment in the Autobot Army.

Prowl made an about face, and completely tossing his nice logical plan out the window, went as fast as his dignity allowed him to go to the rec room. He entered, took one look around and left as quickly as he had come. Sideswipe must be in his and his brother's quarters…or the medbay.

Prowl first checked the twins' quarters. No answer and there was no energy signal inside. He then went to the medbay, were Ratchet was currently in a foul mood patching Red Alert back up from his latest glitch.

"If you're not dying nor have an appointment, leave. I don't need any more nonsense today," snapped Ratchet without turning around.

"Ratchet, I just wanted to inquire as to the location of the twins, particularly Sideswipe," Prowl neutrally stated.

"I have no fraggin' clue where that lay about knuckle head is," growled Ratchet looking up "But if you do see him, please feel free to send him to me. I want to personally thank him for painting my tools pink and then gluing them to the ceiling of the Dinobot's cavern. It was such a thoughtless thing for him to do."

If Prowl was creeped out by this, he didn't show it. Instead, he said, "I will pass along the message," and left medbay as neutral as ever.

Prowl headed to the duty logs to see if Sideswipe was on duty or not (and, of course, if he had the time on his grimy servos to pull off this string of pranks). On his way back to his office, he passed Jazz sneaking along the corridor. Now when the grandmaster (Sideswipe being his apprentice) is seen sneaking down a hall, one must pause and question why. Prowl did just that.

"Jazz, what are you doing?"

Jazz, cool as ever, remained as he was "Training," he replied.

"Training?" repeated Prowl.

"Yeah, Spc. Ops. stuff. Ya know, practicin infiltration 'n stuff," said Jazz.

Prowl made a mental note to also check Special Operations schedule for today. "Well, Jazz, since you seem to be doing training about the Ark today, you would not have happened to have noticed any misbehavior, have you?"

Jazz was now almost to the end of the hall and still hadn't looked once at Prowl. "Can' say that Ah have." And with that, he slipped around the corner, completely clear of the security cameras.

Prowl allowed himself to sigh since no one but Red Alert was watching (that is, if Ratchet was finished with him, and he had gotten the cameras to start working again). He then continued on his way to his office. The painting was still present (Prowl planned that as part of the punishment) and Prowl was about to simply enter when he paused. Quickly but efficiently, he scanned for anything out of the ordinary. He picked up nothing outside his office or just beyond his door.

He entered his office and did another scan. He again, found nothing. He sat at his desk and entered his log-in code to the computer terminal. What popped up was not his desktop. Instead, a "Fantasy Quest" game screen savoir blinked into existence and Prowl felt the start of a processor ache.

'Wheeljack, would you please come to my office?' commed Prowl. The crazy inventor acknowledged him, and it wasn't a few kliks before the walking explosive arrived.

Prowl motioned toward his terminal "Care to explain?" he asked again calmly.

Wheeljack took one look and said "You've got it too? That makes twelve log-in codes."

"Twelve?"

"Yeah, someone's idea of a joke," explained Wheeljack "It's easy enough to fix. Just hold the 'shift' key down while you're logging on." He got the log-in screen back up. "There that should do it."

Prowl did as instructed and he got to his desktop, no quest nonsense this time. Prowl thanked Wheeljack, warned him not to blow anything up because Ratchet in one of his decacycle moods, and dismissed him.

Prowl was finally able to check the whereabouts of a certain red Lamborghini. He noted that yes, Jazz's team of "spybots" (seriously Jazz nicknamed everything) were training all day. As he scrolled down to Sideswipe's file, he realized he had a far bigger problem than he had thought. Sideswipe, clown prince of pranks, was in Nepal and had been since an incident last Tuesday. How the _frag_ did he forget that?

Well at least he wasn't the only one who forgot that Sideswipe was away (along with Sunstreaker and Smokescreen), Ratchet had also forgotten he was away.

"He must have forgotten with his lack of daily quota of wrench to helm bashings," murmured Prowl.

Well now, Prowl was in a pickle (okay, where did the American humans come up with these sayings?). He had absolutely no idea who could have pulled off even half of these pranks, let alone all of them in one day.

Okay, that was a lie. Prowl could predict the probability of each individual on the Ark at this time. It was just that most of the probabilities were less than ten percent (minus Jazz, but he was busy). What Prowl needed was a plan of action. Well thought out and easy to execute. And something that wouldn't draw attention to itself.

Well he wasn't the greatest Autobot tactician for nothing.

His plan was well thought out, but simple in nature. He predicted the next likely target of the prankster or pranksters and had set up. It was likely that Ironhide would be next on the list of bots to be pranked. He was a favorite, along with most of the minibots, because he was rather vocal about it. He also predicted Ironhide, because so far only officers had really been targeted (except Optimus) and since he himself, Red Alert, and Ratchet had all been pranked and with Wheeljack and Perceptor, the favored targets of many personnel, running around fixing pranks, then Ironhide was definitely next.

Prowl knew that Ironhide was going to be down at the targeting range after his shift, and that seemed like the perfect time to get him. Prowl had just set up his little plan outside of the targeting range, when the unexpected happened.

Over the loudspeaker came music. Not just any music, but a song by Weird Al called "Albuquerque."

Prowl frowned, he was positive that Ironhide would have been the next victim. Prowl commed Blaster, -Situation?-

-I was just about to make an Ark wide announcement when this song started to play- came Blaster's voice –I think I'll have it under control in just a sec.-

-See that you do,-replied Prowl. He was about to head to the comm center, Blaster's domain, when he noticed some slight movement out of the corner of his optic. He froze. Perhaps his calculations were partially correct, and the loud music was only a distraction.

In a matter of kliks, Prowl was uncertain if his analysis had been correct. No one had shown up since the slight movement. He was about to move again when a target on the range vanished. Now things do not just vanish on the Ark, but Prowl knew of a certain master spy who did. And if he were to judge by the two sets of barley audible footsteps heard, he could swear that it was also a certain mini-master spy.

Prowl slid out of his spot in the shadows and moved to take his place on the shooting range. Taking very careful aim with his acid pellet gun, he aimed slightly to the right of the next target.

His shot rang true as he hit his target, a small knob on Mirage's right arm that connected to his invisible power source. Within a second, Mirage and Bumblebee were visible. Prowl smiled (something Mirage and Bumblebee had been certain was not possible before). "I thought you two had training all day with Jazz?"

Prowl sat down in his desk chair while Bumblebee and Mirage sat opposite him. Prowl's face was once again a neutral mask as he commed Jazz and told him to come to his office.

This was not anything unusual; therefore Jazz was a little startled to see his two best spies sitting the chairs in front of Prowl's desk. That must mean - oh no.

"Jazz," began Prowl "I was down at the shooting range just now, and who did I find messing with the targets but your two best subordinates. Imagine my surprise since I was under the impression that all three of you were supposed to be doing a training exercise all day.

Jazz smiled his best Jazz smile (soon to be patented). "Aw, now Prowler, you can't-"

"Jazz," said Prowl with a definite underlying growl in that calm voice. "I was unaware that scheduling time for your operatives to disrupt the Ark was a part of official protocol."

Jazz shrugged "Would you believe me if I told you that was the training exercise?"

Prowl did not look amused. "Jazz, you want to tell me that his has all been a training exercise?"

Jazz nodded looking a picture of innocence as Prowl crashed.

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Constructive Critizism Please.


End file.
